were plainly scum to her, and it gave her ardent joy to see that most
of them were hurt when she impressed this on them mercilessly. It was
safer for her son to talk about the interesting German couple to the
second officer than it was for him to talk about them to his mother,
but, lo! youth knows not wisdom.

"Mother," he suggested upon the sixth day out, "I want to have you
come and see a fascinating couple on the steerage-deck."

"Another bride and groom?" she asked, in a bored voice. Brides and
grooms had come to be monotonous. She had seen all sorts since she had
started on this journey and now loathed the thought of newly married
fellow-creatures. She could not understand why John's interest had
been maintained in them.

He laughed. "No, not a bride and groom. The man is an old German,
handsome and refined, evidently out of place upon the steerage-deck,
the girl--she--why, mother, she's a peach. _She'd_ be out of place
'most anywhere but on a throne!"

"How very vulgar, John," his mother answered with that cold assumption
of superiority which had come to her with money. "I cannot see how
even you can link the steerage-deck with thrones. Princesses do not
travel steerage except between the covers of cheap books."

He laughed again. John Vanderlyn was clean and healthy-souled. He did
not always take his mother (whom he idolized) too seriously.

"I didn't say she was a princess," he replied, "but she might well be.
It was, however, rather the old man than the girl, though she is very